The Hawaiian Blue Puffer is well as a great ?personality? fish. It is sexually dimorphic, in which the males are having conspicuous point in the middle of the back, and over the position of the gill opening, which generally lacks in females and juveniles. The Hawaiian Blue Puffer produces a toxin, which is known as tetradotoxin, in the skin and viscera that makes them unpalatable to most fish. It acclimatizes quickly to an aquarium life, and needs lot of hiding places with rocks and crevices. The Hawaiian Blue Puffer is not at all considered reef safe, since it nips over the corals and can make them to suffer by darting the poison on them. It should be kept in fish only aquarium, and is highly recommended not to add multiple inhabitants in the same tank. Also, acclimation time of one to two hours should be given to this fish. It is also commonly known as Blue Spotted Sharpnose, since its brown body is covered with brilliant blue dots. The Hawaiian Blue Puffer can feed largely on red algae, green algae, and coralline algae. Since its penchant for coralline algae, the flesh of stony corals, and crustaceans, it?s not at all considered reef safe, and thus not recommended for reef aquarium. The Hawaiian Blue Puffer has a distinct feature to save itself from predation by ingesting water into the ventral portion of its body and blows up so that it becomes difficult to ingest it. It has incredibly strong plated mouth structures that are used to bite and crush even the toughest shells.
The Hawaiian Blue Puffer, a.k.a. Papau Toby, is a red-brown with white, blue, and green spots througout its body. They have a "false-eye" at the base of its dorsal fin and orange around their mouth. These fish are great for fish-only tanks. Keep only one per tank.The family of Puffers is a distinct family marked by their ability to ingest water into the ventral portion of their body causing them to blow up for protection. These fish also have incredibly strong plated mouth structures that are used to bite and crush even the toughest shells.Almost all puffers are slow swimming fishes with powerful jaws made up of fused teeth feeding on a variety of slow moving and often hard animals. Also have a poison in their skin, tissues and organs. The poison is an alkaloid nerve poison.They will do well in a fish-only aquarium. Keep only one per tank.Puffers have bodies that are very rounded and often tapered at the mouth and caudal (tail) fin regions. Color varies, but many species have light spots and or spines.Feeds mainly on mollusks (hard, powerful teeth enable them to break through mollusk shells); also fed on other invertebrates including sponges and coral.
